MoNatureMan wrote:There are times of God dealing with people differently. All pointing the same way, but differently. Before Christ it was looking forward to the Redeamer, and now we rejoice in His glorious work. I am also sure you could break it down much more then that. And from what I understand these times would be considered dispensations.
What am I missing
I do not have an issue with breaking down the various ways that God has dealt with mankind and referring to those periods as "dispensations". However, ALL of the "dispensations" pointed to their eventual and ultimate fulfillment in Christ Jesus, Who's final words on the cross were "tetelestai", "It is FINISHED", "PAID IN FULL".
The dispensationalists I have been involved with tend to refer to this age as "The Church Age", which they see as a "parenthetic" period. They seem to think that there is a need for a "rapture" to occur in which all of the "Christians" will be removed from the Earth, a rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple and a re-initiation of Temple Sacrifice for the remission of sin, exclusively for the remaining Jews, in essence a SEPARATE way, apart from Christ for Jews to save themselves by their own works, just as many had tried to do before Christ.
As hard as I can, and I studied this issue for about eight years SOLID, I could not come to the same or similar conclusion. We attended a "Dispensational" church for about five years, and the pastor of that church was also the Dean of Theology and President for a local seminary. We had many, many discussions on the topic. However, when I read and studied the verses he provided to support the notion of a rebuilt Temple, they all pointed to the rebuilding of the Temple that had been destroyed prior to the Babylonian and Assyrian exiles, which Temple was later updated by Herod and then destroyed by Titus in 70AD, which Temple was also written of by John in his Revelation chapter 11. There is no further mention after that. The other areas we differed on were in the interpretations of the Olivette Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21), particularly in the understanding of Jesus' words "THIS generation" (rather than "THAT generation"). They have a tendency to jump from the immediate context of Jesus' discussion about the "soon to occur" destruction of the (Herodian) Temple, to some distant future destruction of a different temple.
